IT WOULD appear that some family doctors in Britain may need a ticking off.

A group calling itself Worldwide Lyme Protest UK is claiming not enough GPs here fully understand the symptoms of Lyme disease, a serious illness caused by infected ticks.

Tick bites are common enough - but this new group reckons we should take the problem far more seriously. Tunners agrees.

I had a worrying tick experience while visiting my son in Thailand. We were travelling in a remote area when Richard’s Thai fiancée Nicky spotted one of the little demons stuck in the side of my head. Fortunately, she’s a pharmacist and knew exactly what antibiotics I needed to take. She was also able to remove the blood-bloated tick with the precision of a surgeon, using her beautifully manicured fingernails.

Before this tick attack, I was completely ignorant of the debilitating potential of Lyme disease. However, my Latvian wife put me right. In her country, people take the disease extremely seriously and country dwellers are routinely vaccinated against infection, along with periodic boosters. People who find a tick embedded in their person are also advised to go straight to hospital to have it removed by medical staff to avoid leaving a little bit of the creature stuck in there, which can a major problem.

My mother-in-law, who is vulnerable to tick attacks because she spends much of the summer foraging for mushrooms close to the family dacha, takes all the precautions going. She’s all too acutely aware what happened to a neighbour who has suffered years of neurological problems after failing to get vaccinated against Lyme disease.

In Britain, we can rightly celebrate the generally benign nature of our countryside. But we should not be complacent.

In Latvia, they have wild bears, wolves and lynx – but it’s the tiny infected tick that causes most fear.